


Count the Ways

by dracoqueen22



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Campaign 2 (Critical Role), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 22:33:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17692364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracoqueen22/pseuds/dracoqueen22
Summary: Molly’s heart has plenty of room for each member of the Mighty Nein.





	Count the Ways

He falls in love with Jester first.   
  
It’s really not hard to do. She’s sweet and charming and a complete and total menace. Molly’s taken aback, at first, by how she comes across as innocent, but can cause so much chaos and mischief in a matter of moments. How can he not adore such an agent of pandemonium?   
  
Perhaps he’s being unfair.   
  
He loves Yasha first. He loves Yasha first and always. She’s nestled into his heart, right there in a warm and previously empty space. Yasha is how he first learns to love, and she’s his big sister, and his soul mate, and his favorite person in the entire world.   
  
Yasha leaves sometimes, and Molly learns to get used to it, because she always comes back, and Molly makes sure she has a place when she does. Molly is her home, and she is his, and he likes it that way. Yes, sure, they have the circus, but their home is actually each other.   
  
So Yasha first. Then Jester.   
  
After that, it’s an avalanche of emotions, one right after the other.   
  
Fjord comes next because there’s a certain love that’s bred of familiarity, and there’s a specific familiarity that comes from sharing a room with someone time and time again. He’s seen Fjord half-dressed and undressed and fully dressed. He’s been trusted with Fjord’s secrets, and he’s seen Fjord’s insecurities.   
  
It’s impossible not to love Fjord.   
  
He tries so hard, and he struggles so much. Molly has never seen someone so worthy of being loved, who has no clue how much he deserves it. Boggles the mind, it does. So he loves Fjord fiercely, and helps him remember to laugh and have confidence and have faith. He loves Fjord especially when Fjord forgets to love himself.   
  
Nott claws her way into his heart completely without Molly’s permission. One moment he’s looking at her with disbelief and amusement, and the next moment, he wants to wrap her up in shimmering cloth and hold her toward the heavens because she’s perfect and she needs to know it. She’s tiny and fierce and taking on the world. She’s different, and she knows it, and she’s chasing after it with all of her small but so very large heart, and Molly loves her for it.   
  
One can’t love Nott without loving Caleb as well, so it’s no surprise when one night Molly goes to tuck in a blanket around Caleb and realize that the dirty ginger has put a crack into his heart. Caleb is tired and worn, his face lined with years far beyond what he must have actually lived, and self-loathing radiates from him in painful waves.   
  
It’s something Molly can’t understand, this idea of self-loathing, because he tries to live as if he’s proud of every choice he’s made. Granted, he can only remember the last two years of his life, and he’s chosen to ignore whatever he was before.   
  
Caleb can’t seem to do that. He clings to his past instead. He calls himself garbage, as if garbage can’t be recycled and reused and made into something better. He measures every action now against a misdeed from the past, and Molly wants to scoop him up and tell him he can still want better. He’s trying. He’s trying like they’re all trying, and that’s what matters.   
  
Molly loves him for his struggle.   
  
Beauregard steals his heart last, not because she’s least deserving of it, but because he recognizes much too late that his exasperation for her is actually fondness. She’s crass and coarse and she rubs him all the wrong ways, and Molly laughs because it amuses him greatly. She’s fantastic and wonderful, and he hates her as much as he loves her.   
  
She’s amazing, like everyone else in the Mighty Nein, and Molly can’t believe he didn’t realize the squeeze in his heart sooner.   
  
The six of them nestle into Molly’s heart, filling all the rest of the empty spaces until he thinks he might burst. He watches over them fondly, this odd but perfect family he’s gathered, and even though it’s only been a couple months at best, he wants to keep them safe forever.   
  
He wants to help Jester find her father, and see Fjord reach his full potential, and for Caleb to forgive himself. He wants Nott to be comfortable in her own body, and for Yasha to realize she’ll always have a home, and for Beauregard to understand that the world is only as shitty as you want it to be.   
  
They aren’t heroes, and they aren’t villains, but they deserve each other, and they need each other, and it’s not the life Molly had imagined for himself, but it’s the life he wants. It’s like a tapestry of fate, woven together, if he even believed in such a thing.   
  
He loves them all. Each and every one.   
  
They’re his new circus, as weird and quirky and perfect as he needs them to be.   
  
They’re home. 

**Author's Note:**

> This particular piece was written for a Mollymauk fanzine, but I decided to go with a different one for the zine. Feedback, as always, is welcome, appreciated, and encouraged. :)


End file.
